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Category Archives: Sydenham Hill Woods

Join the London Wildlife Trust’s Sydenham Hill Wood Conservation Officer Daniel Greenwood for a guided bird walk. We will be listening to and observing the array of bird species present at the Wood.

June is the height of the bird breeding season, meaning that birds will be most active before the late summer when many species begin to moult after a tiring few months of raising young and defending territories.

We are likely to see the staple woodland species of wren, robin, blackbird, woodpigeon, and to hear migrant blackcap and chiffchaff, as well as nuthatch and stock dove. There is always an outside chance of kestrel, sparrowhawk and our resident tawny owl.

Please wear suitable footwear for a woodland with rugged paths, steps and gentle inclines. If there is prolonged heavy rain, thunderstorms or high winds the walk will be cancelled.

This is a free walk, a minimum donation of £2 towards our work is recommended

If you love Sydenham Hill Wood please help the London Wildlife Trust protect it in the long term by becoming a London Wildlife Trust member

Join London Wildlife Trust for a guided walk to spot the violets, bluebells, primroses and buttercups that mark a special time in Sydenham Hill Wood. Sydenham Hill Wood is home to plants, animals and fungi that show it has been covered by trees since the 1600s, with some parts linking back to the prehistoric wildwood

We will also keep an eye out for spring birds, butterflies and the trees coming into leaf

This is a free walk, a minimum donation of £2 towards London Wildlife Trust’s work is recommended

Join the London Wildlife Trust for an early morning bird walk in the woods. They’ll be looking and listening out for the many species of birds that use the woods at this time of year.

The dawn chorus is one of the most important dates in nature’s calendar. Sydenham Hill Wood is a part ancient and secondary woodland with a diverse strcuture of habitats. This means the Wood is rich in biodiversity and is especially good for its bird species.

Recent dawn chorus walks have led to encounters with kestrel, song thrush, green woodpecker, nuthatch and hunting tawny owl. Though there is much to see at this time in the morning, the main purpose of the walk will be to tune into the aural ambience of this very special landscape.

Join London Wildlife Trust for a guided walk to discover the range of birds present in Sydenham Hill Wood.

Winter sees the return of the iconic firecrest, redwing, fieldfare, siskin and an influx of robin, goldfinch and chaffinch. It’s also a great time to see birds because the trees are bare.

Sydenham Hill Wood supports a stunning array of breeding birds in the summer months, but winter is the best time to look for harder to spot birds like the nuthatch, tree creeper, and to spot flocks of redwing

This is a free walk, a minimum donation of £2 towards our work is recommended

Sydenham Hill Wood is part of the Great North Wood, a network of woods and commons that once stretched from Deptford to Selhurst. The Wood is part ancient and is recovering as a nature reserve after the damage done by Victorian development in the mid-late 1800s. Sessile oak and hornbeam are the Wood’s principle species that tell a story of London’s natural history but also it’s development as a city.

London’s woods fuelled its early development and today are cherished for their role in providing habitat for wildlife and peaceful refuge for visitors, whilst purifying the air, storing carbon and containing rainwater.

By learning to identify trees in winter you can gain ID skills that will help you to deepen your knowledge when they leaf again in spring.

A talk about the history of Sydenham Hill Wood & Cox’s Walk at the Centre for Wildlife Gardening

Join London Wildlife Trust at the Centre for Wildlife Gardening for a talk about the history of Sydenham Hill Wood.

Sydenham Hill Wood is one of the largest remaining remnants of the Great North Wood, a landscape of woods and commons which stretched from Deptford to Selhurst and has origins in the wildwood that colonised after the Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago. The Wood has a fascinating cultural history, with a number of interesting individuals having lived nearby within the Great North Wood. These include John Ruskin, Lord Byron and the speech therapist, Lionel Logue, made famous by The King’s Speech. The former lived in a house which was once a part of Sydenham Hill Wood.

The Wood itself was saved from development in the 1980s resulting in a nature reserve loved and managed by members of the local community, the very people who saved it.

Today London Wildlife Trust volunteers rekindle ancient land management of coppicing, pollarding and dead hedging to aid the regeneration of the Wood’s flora and fauna.